The House Intelligence Committee has sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater. House Democrats are accusing Prince of lying to Congress during his November 2017 testimony before the Committee, when he described a meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker before Donald Trump’s inauguration as a chance encounter.

Blackwater founder Erik Prince has been denied the ability to sell tanks or planes, explains investigative reporter Matthew Cole, who just published a new piece exposing Prince’s involvement with the Trump administration.

Perhaps the clearest expression of this shift to date is the lead editorial in Monday’s print edition of the New York Times. Headlined “Give Trump His Border Money”, the statement demands that Congress approve the request sent by the White House to Congress last week for an additional $4.5 billion in “emergency” funding, ostensibly to manage the surge in the number of refugees from Central America crossing into the US to seek asylum.

Summing up what has become the mantra of both big business parties and the whole of the corporate media, the editorial begins, “President Trump is right: There is a crisis at the southern border.”

Nor does it mention Trump’s authoritarian declaration of a national emergency on the border and his allocation of Pentagon funds to expand his border wall, in defiance of Congress and the US Constitution. Or his more recent moves in defiance of international and US law to effectively deny refugees the right to file for asylum and strip immigrants caught up in the US immigration system of their habeas corpus rights. Nor does it note last month’s purge of the Department of Homeland Security, carried out to move, as Trump put it, in a “tougher direction” on the border.

Just last week, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer emerged from a closed-door White House meeting with Trump to hail the meeting as “productive” and reiterate their eagerness to work with the White House. This came one day after Trump’s memorandum ordering the imposition of asylum application fees and the use of border cops to determine whether applicants have a “credible fear” of injury or death in their homeland. It also followed an op-ed column by the Times ’ Thomas Friedman supporting Trump’s border wall …

Meanwhile, there is mounting violence and misery along the southern border of the US. Last week, the Border Patrol recovered the body of a ten-month old infant and declared two other children and a man to be missing following the capsizing of a raft bearing nine people seeking to cross the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas. The missing include a boy and girl, both age 7, who were part of group of immigrants from Honduras.

In fiscal 2018, border agents recorded 283 deaths along the US-Mexico border, including drownings, accidents and the discovery of human remains. …

These deaths do not include immigrants who have died in the detention camps or while in the care of the US government, such as the 16-year-old Guatemalan boy who died last week while hospitalized with a brain infection.

Two new giant “tent cities” to house hundreds of undocumented immigrants were opened last week in Texas, one near El Paso and the other in the state’s Rio Grande Valley next to the Donna-Rio Bravo international bridge. The camps are meant to house immigrants for no more than 72 hours, until families are broken up and taken away by either Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the Department of Health and Human Services.

Many of the ICE detention centers are called “iceboxes” or “hieleras” by the immigrants because of the freezing temperatures they endure while detained inside them. Physical abuse and sexual violence are rampant in the camps and immigrants may be detained for many days, not just 72 hours.

One tent city in Texas was found by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2014 to have problems with bug infestations, overcrowding, overflowing sewage, extreme temperatures and rotten food.

… The bipartisan character of the war on immigrants was underscored on Sunday when Trump named Mark Morgan as the new permanent head of ICE. Morgan will replace former acting director Ronald Vitiello, who resigned after Trump refused to make him the permanent head as part of his purge of the immigration apparatus.

Morgan was head of the Border Patrol during the last six months of the Obama administration, which carried out the highest number of deportations in US history. Morgan has denounced Congress for failing to gut the so-called Flores Settlement, which limits the length of time the government can detain immigrant children. He is also on record supporting Trump’s proposal to send undocumented immigrants detained by ICE to “sanctuary cities.”

Apart from pausing a few data-sharing agreements, promising a fairer and more humane immigration system, and rebranding to emphasise ‘compliance’ over hostility, this brutal set of policies has gone nowhere.

Without a firewall between immigration enforcement and essential public services, children’s school records, patient data and police information on victims of crime are still handed to the Home Office.

And we now know that the government is secretly building a massive migrant database to embed border controls even deeper within our communities.

Rather than engaging substantively with the breadth of concern about the government’s discriminatory and counterproductive Prevent programme, that Liberty and many others have expressed over the years, instead, the Home Secretary accused these campaign groups of siding with extremists.

7. Backed the roll-out of spit hoods to police forces across the country

In his first major speech as Home Secretary, Javid called for these degrading and dangerous devices to be given to all frontline police officers.

8. Proposed criminalising children as young as 12 with new knife ASBOs

Police will now be able to apply for a knife ASBO where they suspect ‘on the balance of probabilities’ that someone has carried a knife in the last two years.

People – including children as young as 12 – may be limited in where they go, who they see, and what they watch online, based on a weaker standard of proof than they would face going through criminal proceedings.

Failing to comply with the orders is a criminal offence, funnelling children into the criminal justice system while doing nothing to address the root causes of serious violence.

A black person is now nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person, even though the rate at which prohibited items are found is similar across all ethnicities. Race disproportionality is even worse under suspicionless powers, but Javid has made them even easier to use.

This inaction has allowed South Wales Police to use it in public spaces at will, and the Met are considering whether or not to roll it out as an operational tool following a long and controversial trial.

Standing up to power

But the Home Secretary’s inadequate performance has been met with acts of resistance across society.

More than 70,000 people have signed a Liberty petition to end indefinite immigration detention; and momentum is building across Parliament to amend the Immigration Bill to secure a 28-day time limit for everyone.

Liberty and Big Brother Watch have launched landmark legal challenges to stop unlawful police use of facial recognition technology. Liberty’s case against South Wales Police will be heard later in May.

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants proved in court that the Home Office’s landlord immigration checks cause discrimination and breach human rights.